


The Mobster

by thesmallchameleon



Series: Tales Not Worth Telling [3]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, And tbh really sweet, Aromantic Jonny d'Ville, Arson, Ashes O'Reilly is a master of comedy, Blood, Blood Loss, But I gotta tell you it's not super heavy on the comfort, Drinking, Fire, Gen, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Listen it's a Mechs' fic, Medical Torture, Needles, Objectification, Ok I think that's all the warnings, Smoking, That's it, Torture, that's the fic, you know what you're in for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesmallchameleon/pseuds/thesmallchameleon
Summary: For a kid who'd been let down and betrayed at every turn, who smiled in the face of eternity and burned their home planet to the ground Ashes was…not what you'd expect. They weren't good. Gods in hell knew no one aboard the Aurora was good. And sure they were absolutely committed to the pyromaniac schtick (which, the longer Jonny knew them, the more and more confused he became on whether it even was a schtick or if the bassist genuinely just kind of liked setting things on fire enough for it to become an integral part of their identity.) The point was, they were a lot of things. And every decade he knew them he understood them a little more, and a little less.Or what a quartermaster is and how Ashes knows it. Even if they pretend otherwise.
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Ashes O'Reilly
Series: Tales Not Worth Telling [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792681
Comments: 4
Kudos: 78





	The Mobster

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh I wasn't originally planning to write a fic about each Mech. But the more I thought about it the more ideas I had for each of them so. Anyway I love Ashes so very much and I think this one is slightly less depressing than the last two installments lol. Hopefully.

Jonny loved Malone the same way he loved a cigarette: heady, and choking, and with the absolute certainty that it would have long since killed him if such a thing weren't impossible.

He had no idea how long they spent there, loved every minute of it, and wasn't sad at all to see it burn. He wasn't sure why exactly Dr. Carmilla had decided to douse the entire planet in gasoline and set it ablaze, but it certainly was a pretty thing to watch grow smaller and smaller in the distance, like a tiny star. Whatever her reasons (if she even had any), he was happy enough to leave with the few murderous memories he had between the drunken hazes and absolutely no souvenirs.

He wasn't so happy to find out that the Doc had taken one.

There was a person in the kitchens, leaning against the counter and swirling a glass of whiskey in one hand. They were Black and heavyset, with half a shaved head and the distinctive clothing of Malone: waistcoat, pinstripes, fedora, the whole nine yards. There was a distant look in their eyes that Jonny recognized.

Fuck.

"Who the hell are you?" Jonny blurted. They looked up coolly from their drink and gave him an assessing look. They looked a bit older than he had been when he had…stopped. Certainly older than Nastya. They knocked back the rest of their drink without so much as a flinch before introducing themself.

"Ashes O'Reilly," they said. "You Jonathan then?"

"Jonny," he corrected. There wasn't much he could do about the Doc calling him whatever she pleased, but he wasn't going to stand for it from anyone else.

Luckily it didn't seem like that would be a sticking point for Ashes. They just hummed.

"You met the Doc then?" Jonny asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah."

"What'd she swap out?" he asked, curiosity overcoming anger and any sense of decorum he didn't have.

"Lungs." The question didn't seem to bother them. They uncorked the bottle of whiskey and poured themself another drink. "You?"

"Heart," he said. They hummed again, swirling their glass. Jonny didn't even really want a drink, having spent most of his time planet-side absolutely plastered, but there was something about the principle of it, of watching someone else take what he had come to think of as his if only because nobody else on the ship seemed to bother. "Pour me one while you're at it."

They gave him a look, one eyebrow raised.

"Are you even old enough?"

They were lucky they were standing next to a rather rare bottle of alcohol or Jonny would've drawn on them right then and there.

"Fuck you I'm older than you'll ever be," he said. They snorted and went to grab another glass. They poured him a drink and slid it across the island to him. He caught it.

"Alright gramps," they said. "Don't have a heart attack on me."

He flipped them off and drained the thing just to spite them.

"Though I'm not sure you're right about that last part." That distant look started to reappear in their eye.

Jonny put down the glass maybe a bit harder than necessary and rolled his eyes.

"Gah," he said. "Boohoo. Young and beautiful forever, traipsing around the universe doing whatever you like with no one to stop you. Woe is you."

They stared at him thoughtfully, without the ire he expected and probably deserved.

"Hm," they said, taking a drink. "I mean, you're not wrong. It's a struggle being this hot."

Jonny choked a little. It's not that they _weren't_. They were objectively quite attractive. If you went in for that sort of thing. (That sort of thing being…well…anything.) But Jonny, who didn't, had to tamp down a sudden jolt of panic that they thought that he did.

"You're odd," they said, watching him flounder for a moment. "Not sure exactly what I was expecting from the way Carmilla talked about you but—"

"Doctor," Jonny interjected.

"Yeah? Her?" Ashes seemed confused.

"No," Jonny said, suddenly vehement. "Call her Dr. Carmilla. Or Doctor, or Doc, or nothing at all just. Take my word for it."

Their eyebrows rose, but they didn't question it. They knew what she was capable of.

"Alright," they said. "Any other advice?"

"Yeah," he said, deciding he'd had enough of the conversation. "Don't listen to anything she says."

He turned to go. He was sure he'd be seeing plenty enough of this Ashes over the next eternity so no reason to overdo it now. (Though if the way he'd been seeing Nastya less and less as she retreated deeper into the Aurora was anything to go by…maybe not as much as he thought.)

"Funny you should say that," Ashes said. "She had some nice things to say about you."

It was a joke. A bad joke. And Jonny wasn't an idiot enough to ask what the punch-line was.

"Well," he said, already half-way through the open doorway, "case in point."

They got on well enough, surprisingly. He still shouted, stomped and shot at them, but they never rose to bait like Nastya did, so as long as he didn't end up shooting blindly and walking off in a huff, they managed to keep relatively bloodless company. Mostly, Jonny thought, this peace was made possible by Ashes's tendency to fall quiet. Not in the distant way Nastya did, but when they were comfortable. Jonny found himself spending a surprising amount of time in their company, simply sitting and tending to some menial task like cleaning his gun or mending, while they played solitaire or read.

It was during one of these times, sitting as they were on the floor of the common room, Jonny mending a pair of trousers, Ashes reading…whatever it was they read, when Ashes suddenly looked up from their book.

"Jonny," they said.

"Yeah?" Jonny didn't look up.

"D'you know what a quartermaster is?"

Jonny paused in his sewing for a moment. He wasn't so good at talking at the same time, and was more likely to fuck it up or jab himself if he tried. Not that it mattered, but he'd put a needle clean through his thumb more times than he could count at this point, and it was always a pain trying to get the damn thing out.

"It's a position on a crew," he said. "A title. Like, on a ship you've got the captain who's in charge of everything, obviously, then the quartermaster is basically second in command. Takes over if the captain's indisposed, passes along orders, deals out supplies and discipline. Captain gives the orders, but they're the one who makes sure they're actually being followed."

Ashes looked thoughtful for a moment and Jonny did a few more stitches.

"What about the first mate then? Sounds like quartermaster's got a lot of his job."

Jonny snorted.

"First mate's just a chain of command thing really. Not exactly a job. Pirate crews didn't have one, quartermaster filled that role. And it's…its own thing in more official situations. Not what you expect though."

Ashes hummed, stared into space for a moment, then went back to their book.

"Why?" Jonny asked. "What are you reading?"

Ashes looked up, seeming surprised, and glanced at the book in their hands as if it confused them. Jonny wondered vaguely if they'd even been reading it at all.

"Oh," they said. "Oh no. It's just something the Doc said. When she first…when we met."

Jonny frowned in confusion, then laughed humorlessly.

"The fuck was the Doc blabbering about pirates for?"

"Well," Ashes said. And Jonny didn't like the careful look in their eye. "It's kind of what we are, isn't it?"

Jonny opened his mouth, then closed it. A thrill of glee ran through him. Pirates. Just like all of the stories he'd been told as a brat. Swashbuckling and stealing, doing whatever they pleased, answering to no one. It was a little like that, wasn't it?

"I suppose it is," he said, a small smile growing on the corner of his mouth.

It stopped growing suddenly, and he frowned.

"But what'd the Doc have to say about it?" he said. "She doesn't care about…I don't know. Adventure?"

Ashes gave him a funny look.

"Doesn't she?" they said. "I mean. Why else would we be here? In space."

And that stopped Jonny right in his tracks. Metaphorically, of course. He'd put down his sewing a while back.

"I don't know," he muttered. "Why's the Doc do anything?"

It was a question he'd stopped asking a long time ago. Because asking it meant assuming there was an answer. Because he didn't like the places his mind went when he tried to think about what that answer might be.

"Beats me," Ashes said, flipping the pages of their book that Jonny was sure now they weren't actually reading. "But if nothing else she's definitely got a sense of adventure."

That was…fair. Jonny guessed. It explained a lot, certainly. Stealing the Aurora, hopping from system to system. It certainly wasn't a matter of business anymore. They never stayed any one place long enough for a thing like that to matter. And they certainly never came back anywhere to collect profits. They just…went. Saw. Participated. Learned. And maybe that's all she wanted. Maybe, there wasn't any Reason to it all. Just a way to spend eternity that wasn't so dull. Only thing it didn't really explain was why the doctor…collected.

"Wait, hold on," Jonny said suddenly. "You're avoiding my question."

"Don't know what you mean, Jonny," they said, turning another page. "I'm reading."

"No you're not." Ashes turned another page. "Ashes…goddamnit that's in Cyberian you fuck!"

"Maybe Nastya's been teaching me," they said, turning another page as if that made it more convincing.

"Like hell she is," Jonny said, storming over and grabbing the book from their hands.

"Hey," they said, mildly perturbed, if at all, "I was reading that."

"You weren't!" he said. "I—look. Just. What was the Doc talking about? Why'd you ask me what a quartermaster is, of all things?"

They gave him a long look, and he almost pulled his gun and shot them right between the eyes, but waiting for them to reconstitute would take even longer than waiting for them to reconsider, so he gritted his teeth and waited.

"That's me," they said eventually. "Or. It's what she wants me to be. That's how she introduced you. Jonny's first mate, Nastya's the engineer, I'm supposed to be quartermaster. Whatever the hell that means."

"I just told you what that means," Jonny said reflexively.

"Hm, no," Ashes said, blinking thoughtfully. "I think I would remember that."

"Ashes, goddamnit!"

They wrestled a bit. Or Jonny did, at least. Ashes mostly just kept him at arm's length and, once they got their book back, pretended to "read" again while still holding him off. It finally stopped when Jonny actually managed to punch them in the gut and they wacked him in the head with their book in retaliation with a blow strong enough to knock him off his feet and halfway across the room.

It took him a moment to figure out what had happened, and when he looked up again they had given up "reading" and were just watching him.

"You done?" they asked.

He flipped them off.

"Fuck you O'Reilly."

"Right back at you d'Ville."

He stayed there for a moment, not because he'd cracked his head on the ground and his vision was still spinning, lying on the floor was _comfortable_ sometimes damnit.

"She's building a crew," he said suddenly, the though hitting him about as hard as he'd hit the ground.

"Jonny…"

"God fucking damnit she's building a crew." He pushed himself to his feet and alright maybe the world was spinning a bit but he'd been on this ship long enough to know his way around it black-out drunk. A bit of stumbling wasn't going to throw him off course for long.

"Jonny!"

But Jonny was already out of the room and making his way deeper into the ship's insides.

In all of his years aboard the Aurora, he'd never gone to the Doc's lab of his own accord. Unless you counted the time he'd brought Nastya in, which he didn't. He was drunk and curious and the doctor knew that so no. He'd never found himself standing at the door to her lab just because he wanted to.

He resented the fact that he had to knock, but the Doc kept the lab locked, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to bring himself to burst in even if he'd wanted to. The door slid open as soon as the Doc called "come in."

She was tinkering with something, over on her work bench. It appeared to be a beating heart. The flesh kind. Though the parts scattered about the bench certainly weren't.

She looked up and seemed genuinely surprised to see Jonny, if the amused arch of her brow was anything to go by. She put her delicate tools down and turned on the stool to face him entirely.

"Do you need something, Jonathan?" she asked.

"The fuck do you think you're doing?"

And both her eyebrows rose at that.

"You'll have to be more specific," she said, chastening. "I have my fingers in any number of pies at a time, so to speak."

He ground his teeth.

"You're gathering a crew," he said.

She looked vaguely surprised, then smiled, cold and deadly with no teeth.

"Yes," she said. "I thought that was obvious."

And the thing was maybe it should have been. But when she'd…collected Nastya, he'd assumed it was because she was bored of him (she'd _told_ him it was because she was bored of him) and when she'd gotten to Ashes he'd assumed it was because he was still shit and Nastya had been making herself scarce. A string of whims. A vague idea that if he was only good enough, interesting enough, it would stop.

"Well?" the Doc prompted. "Did you have something to say about it, or are you stomping around and interrupting my work just for fun?"

Jonny floundered for a moment. Tried to think of something to say. _Anything_ to say that might get the doctor to stop. But there wasn't anything. Not really.

"Why?" he asked anyway. "What do you need a crew for? The ship flies itself. You've already got three subjects to experiment on. Hell, if you wanted to make more…mechanical organs or whatever, why not just swap more of mine out?"

"It doesn't work that way Jonathan." She seemed unamused and frankly annoyed that he didn't understand. Weirdly, he didn't exactly care.

"So that's it then?" he said, pacing now, hands tugging at his hair and clothes as he did. "You want a crew…an army of mechanisms to control and you're just going to keep…collecting. Keep stealing people from their homes and breaking them apart and building them new again without bothering to ask if they even wanted this?"

"I asked Nastya. And Ashes. Whether or not they had time to answer wasn't my fault."

"You never asked me!"

And there it was. There he was. The question that had lingered in the back of his brain ever since it had started back up again.

What would he have said if the choice had been his to make?

Dr. Carmilla rose from her seat and something inside of Jonny withered. He stood against it, stubbornly refusing to step back. To be the weak old man he saw through the vent lifetimes ago. She crossed the room in a couple of smooth strides. Her hand rose.

He didn't look away.

The hand came up to rest on his cheek, the gentle brush of her fingers burning worse than any blow.

"Oh Jonny," she said. And there was a tone he hadn't heard in…well. Ever. Soft and patronizing. Knowing, and just a little sad. "You wouldn't have known what to say if I had."

And she was right. Of course she was right, but he grit his teeth against the idea. That she knew. That she always just. Knew. Her thumb brushed his cheek, just under his eye. And if it was anyone else he would have shot her right through that look on her face, but it wasn't so he _couldn't_.

"You asked me what I want," she said, idly brushing a strand of hair out of his eyes. "I want a crew, yes. But I want more than that. I want a family."

And that was too much. That was enough for him to slap her and away and draw his pistol on her even if he couldn't fire it. She didn't give him a chance to try anyway, knocking it out of his hand and shoving him up against the door.

"Jonny, really," she said, voice cool even as he struggled against her. "This is childish."

"Get the fuck off me," he spat, shoving with full force. And she stumbled back. It was the only time she ever did. Her eyes went wide with surprise, then rage. And he leaned against the door and panted and refused to run, refused to stand down even though he knew what sticking around meant.

And sure enough it came.

Her jaw set as she pulled herself up to full height, and Jonny did his best to do the same.

"You," she said, stepping towards him again, "need to calm down."

And that's how he ended up strapped down to her examination table, major arteries sliced open while she found the exact rate at which he could bleed out without bleeding out, blood regenerating at precisely the same rate it left him to turn his body into an endless fountain.

When she finally turned him loose a few days(?) later, he was tired enough to stumble to his quarters to crash for a week, and woozy enough to get confused on the way there.

Hm. He wondered how long he'd have to be on this ship before he could manage that.

Either way, the room he stumbled into wasn't his. Somehow he'd taken a wrong turn and found himself in the common room instead. Ashes and Nastya were sitting at the table doing…something with a set of white tiles. Neither of them looked up when he entered, and he watched them silently for a moment. Something was weird about seeing them like this. It took him a minute to realize that it was the first time he'd seen them in the same room. He knew they talked, but he'd never seen them do it.

"The fuck are you doing?" he asked finally, managing to slur only a little. Alright, maybe a lot.

"Mahjong," Ashes said, without looking up. "Want to play?"

He swayed on his feet for a moment, still staring.

"The fuck is a Mahjong?"

That got Ashes to look up at him, then Nastya. Ashes glanced him over. Nastya frowned deeply.

"Jonny are you drunk again?" she asked.

He waved her off, then took a couple of unsteady steps towards the kitchen. If he was going to be up he might as well have some…water? Or something.

"Nah it's just the uh…blood loss," he said, then stumbled badly. "Shit."

Ashes caught him by the back of the shirt before he could hit the ground. Huh. When had they stood up?

"Alright there Jonny?" they asked.

"Fuck you. I'm fine," he said, stumbling out of their reach. They let him. Unfortunately, this meant in two steps he was falling again. They caught him by the wrist this time.

He didn't wince exactly, but he couldn't help the shiver that ran up his spine. He felt cold. And empty.

"Woah," Ashes said, letting go of his wrist with the one hand and steadying him by the shoulder instead with the other as the first was now smeared with blood from the deep gouge that hadn't yet had time to heal.

"Gross," the said, frowning at the blood on their hand.

"Maybe you should lie down, Jonny," Nastya said, eyebrows rising slowly as they watched the blood still trickling weakly down his arm.

"S'what I'm _trying_ to do," he explained. "But my fucking room is in the wrong place."

"Alright Jonny," Ashes said, guiding him gently towards the couch and ignoring his weak protests. "We'll figure out where your room went after you lie down for a bit."

"Don't tell me what to do," he said, sitting down on the couch.

"Never," they assured him.

"Good."

Nastya had disappeared into the kitchen at some point while Ashes was manhandling him, and when she returned she had a glass of orange juice and a plate of crackers. She set them down on the coffee table in front of Jonny wordlessly before taking her seat again. She finished setting up her tiles while Ashes went to wash the Jonny off of their hands.

"What's this?" he asked too late, staring at the plate of crackers and juice.

"Just eat," Nastya said, not looking up from her game. "Trust me."

So he did. The crackers were a little stale, and the juice clearly came from a powder, but it's not like he'd ever been picky. Ashes returned from the kitchen and sat down at the table to play. Jonny had no idea what they were doing, being entirely unable to see what was on any of the tiles from his angle, but he watched them anyway. Their smooth, comfortable motions and quiet conversation. The gentle clicking of the tiles. It wasn't long before he was drifting into sleep.

Ashes woke him up some while later and lead him to his room. The memory was foggy, and he'd be inclined to believe it didn't even happen except for the fact that he woke up in his own bed a week later with the faint memory of calloused hands on his shoulders and a low, sonorous voice guiding him.

And it wasn't surprising, really. Or it shouldn't have been as surprising as it was. Because the longer he knew Ashes, the more clear it became that that was just the sort of person they were.

Years later (decades? eons? it was impossible to keep track) found him drunk and maudlin in the corner of a bar, ignoring the brilliant sunset that poured in through the window behind him (fucking aerosols) and the incessant ticking of the watch in his pocket that aligned perfectly with that of his heart.

The door to the bar creaked open and he sighed, cocking his pistol and firing blindly behind him as he drained the rest of whatever the fuck was in his glass.

"I actually had to duck that one," a voice said. "Impressive."

"The fuck are you doing here?" he slurred, pouring himself another drink from the bottle he'd commandeered from behind the bar.

He heard them poke around a bit, probably nudge a few of the corpses that were strewn about the place, definitely rifle through a few of their pockets.

"Came to get you actually," they said. "Ship's leaving soon. Thought you'd want to be on it."

Jonny snorted.

"Well," he said, gazing blankly at a long, thin crack in the wall in front of him, "you thought wrong."

They hummed thoughtfully. More footsteps, some jangling as they pocketed a handful of coins. Then they were right behind him, and there was a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on," Ashes said, "let's get out of here."

He jerked his shoulder away and they let their hand fall.

"M'not getting on that goddamn ship," he said. "So just fuckin'. Go."

"Alright," Ashes said. "But if we're going to jump ship, can we at least do it somewhere else? This place smells."

They did have a point. About the smell. Jonny knocked back the glass.

"You can take that with you if you like."

He flipped them off, but staggered to his feet anyway, chucking the glass against the wall and grabbing the bottle by the neck. When he looked at Ashes finally, he couldn't find any treachery or (worse) pity in their eyes, only a mild sense of amusement and a raised eyebrow at his dramatics. So. Ashes as usual.

"Come on," they said. "I know a spot."

So he followed them, swaying badly at first, then a little less as the cooling evening air and his own supernatural liver sobered him up a bit. He had no clue where Ashes was taking him, but it didn't seem to be in the direction of the ship, so he was appeased enough to follow and ready enough to shoot them in the back at the first sign of sabotage.

But it seemed Ashes had been sincere about their willingness to defect so long as it happened somewhere a little nicer than a seedy bar littered with marinating corpses. Apparently the location up to their standards was a little hill, just outside of the city, covered in browning, weedy grass. Jonny kicked an empty bottle of Bulgarian Stir Fry Sauce out of the way and sat down. God this was such a shit planet.

"Well this is…picturesque," he said, gesturing broadly to the sprawling city against the flaming red sky.

Ashes snorted.

"Only you'd be drunk off your arse and still calling things 'picturesque.'"

They seemed less inclined to sit on the ground, and stayed standing, hands casually tucked into their pockets. He watched them watch the sunset for a moment, but nothing in their posture projected that they were about to cut and run. He leaned back on one arm.

"Why'd you come find me?" he asked after a moment, taking a swig from the bottle he'd brought with him. He was getting a little too sober a little too quickly what with all the walking instead of drinking.

"You're always the first one back at the ship," Ashes said, still watching the sunset. Goddamn if it wasn't beautiful on this planet. Blood red and fiery in the smog. They'd like that.

"So what?" Jonny said. "When I wasn't there you thought I was in trouble? Came to save me? I'm swooning."

He fell back onto the ground. Something was digging into his shoulder, so he reached behind him and pulled it out. A disposable plastic floss pick. Lovely.

"Just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing," Ashes said. And when he glanced at them, he had no way of knowing if they were telling the truth. A hard one to read, that Ashes.

"And?" Jonny said. "What's your assessment doc?"

A joke. Not a funny one.

"Well," Ashes said, "I found you shitfaced and surrounded by corpses so. I'm pretty sure you're doing alright."

"If you're going to try to talk me out of it…"

"I'm not," Ashes said. "I meant what I said. You want to stay? We stay."

Jonny hmphed and settled back into the dry dirt and weeds.

"Only…" Jonny glared at Ashes as best as he could from his spot on the ground. They were still gazing at the sunset, thoughtfully. "What about Nastya?"

"What about Nastya?" Jonny said, biting the words out.

"Well," Ashes said. "She'll be all alone on the ship. With the Doc."

Jonny snorted.

"Have you even seen Nastya in what, six weeks? Nine months? However the fuck long it's been? If she can avoid us that long she can avoid the Doc just fine."

Ashes hummed, seemingly turning this over in their head. Maybe they were being sincere. Maybe they really were just taking it seriously.

He huffed a laugh at the thought. Ashes. Taking something seriously.

"You really want to spend the rest of eternity on this shithole planet?" he asked.

"Do you?" Ashes shot back.

That was it. Now Jonny knew for sure they were trying to talk him into heading back. They said they'd already been to the ship, so maybe the Doc had put them up to it. He staggered to his feet. Ashes looked back at him, curiously.

"I fucking knew it," he said. "I told you, I'm not going back so just. Get out of here. I'm not going to let you fucking…I dunno talk me into getting back on that ship. It's not happening!"

Ashes held up their hands.

"Alright, alright," they said. "Stupid question. We steal a spaceship and get off-planet. Just saying, you asked it first."

Jonny stared at them, catching his breath and trying to make the thoughts whirling around in his head make any semblance of sense.

"Really?" he landed on eventually. "You're. You're serious?"

"Uh, yeah," Ashes said, looking at Jonny like he was the one not making any sense. "I said it about twelve times didn't I?"

"Yeah, but you're just trying to get me back on that ship," he said.

They raised their eyebrows at him.

"Why would I do that?" they asked. "You think I like it there any more than you do?"

Fair.

"But, Nastya?" he said.

"You've known her longer than I have," they said. "If you think she'll be alright. Well. I hope so. But I'll take your word for it."

He stared at them. At their easy stance. The trusting expression on their face. And there. Just a glint. A distant gleam of uncertainty in their eyes. Of worry. Or hope.

"So we're really doing this then," he said.

"Guess so."

"She really will leave," he said, in case they didn't get that part. "That ship's taking off whether or not we're on it."

"I know."

"Good."

"Great."

Jonny watched them a little longer. Saw them watching him right back. Then he sighed.

"Let's go for a walk," he said.

So they did. Not far. Not long. Just a meandering stroll through the wasteland wilderness that surrounded the city as the sun sank in the sky, fiery crimson fading to bruisy violet. And when it finally faded into a murky, starless black, and the two wanderers found themselves in front of a great silver starship, neither said a word to the other as they boarded.

Jonny was never quite sure if Ashes had meant it. What they would have done if Jonny really had been able to stay away.

For a kid who'd been let down and betrayed at every turn, who smiled in the face of eternity and burned their home planet to the ground Ashes was…not what you'd expect. They weren't good. Gods in hell knew no one aboard the Aurora was good. And sure they were absolutely committed to the pyromaniac schtick (which, the longer Jonny knew them, the more and more confused he became on whether it even was a schtick or if the bassist genuinely just kind of liked setting things on fire enough for it to become an integral part of their identity.) The point was, they were a lot of things. And every decade he knew them he understood them a little more, and a little less.

A whole city burning. It had Ashes written all over it. And while they usually went their separate ways when they got the chance for shore leave, something about the blaze drew him to it.

He found them, just outside the city, sitting on a bench and watching the smoke billow into the sky.

"I don't get it," he said. They didn't turn to look at him.

"Get what?"

"All…this," he said, gesturing broadly to the unnatural disaster in front of them. "I can't tell if you get a kick out of it or anything."

They shrugged.

"Live forever," they said. "Might as well burn some things down. S'pretty at least. Don't you think?"

"Fair enough, I guess." Jonny said. He sat down next to them. "Seems a bit dramatic, is all."

That got them to look at him. A very pointed look.

"Oh fuck off," he said. "Dramatic for you, I mean."

They laughed a little, then turned back to watch their work. He waited while they thought.

"I dunno," they said finally. "Why do you…you know, murder everyone?"

Fair point.

"Like you said, might as well," he said. And maybe he was in a good mood or some kind of mood because he thought about it a little more and said "And it feels…right."

Ashes nodded and silence fell over them. Jonny looked up at the sky. The smoke blotted out the stars. And wasn't that just like Ashes? To set a blaze so beautiful even the stars in the sky couldn't compete.

"It was the last thing I wanted to do," they said eventually, and Jonny looked back at them to see that distant look in their eyes. "When I was sitting there, breathing in death, with everything falling apart around me. I wanted him to burn. I wanted all of it to burn."

Ashes had told him the story before. A little more casually. Like it was a funny sort of thing. Just a story to tell.

"So what then?" Jonny asked. "You think we're stuck in whatever state we died in? Like…ghosts or something?"

He waited for Ashes to crack a joke. Call him an idiot. Something.

"Maybe," they said, with a shrug. "Don't you feel like one sometimes? Just a bit?"

He thought about the way Nastya looked when he first saw her wandering the ship, pale and distant and lost. The way she disappeared for months at a time, only to reemerge from the depths of their starship as if she hadn't been gone at all. He thought about the way Ashes went quiet, lost in thought for hours on end. The way they appeared right when Jonny needed them most and always seemed to know what to say. He thought about the way his face hadn't changed. The fact that no matter how much time had passed, he would always look just as young and reckless as the night he died.

"That's…stupid," he said eventually.

Ashes looked at him, a small smile quirking on their face. Questioning.

"The way you tell it, you've been setting things on fire since you could hold a lighter," he explained. "And gods know I've been a nightmare since the day I was born. And then what's the state Nastya died in? Being generally annoying?"

Ashes laughed a little, shaking their head.

"You're the only one who thinks Nastya's annoying," they said.

"Yeah well you're all insufferable so…"

They were smiling now. In that crooked, subtle, Ashes O'Reilly sort of way.

"Look, you want to stop setting things on fire? Stop setting things on fire." Jonny said. "What's the point of eternity if we're not going to spend it doing whatever the fuck we want?"

"Fair enough," Ashes said, looking out at the burning city. Still smiling, at least.

A brooding Ashes O'Reilly. Jonny never thought he'd see the day.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked. They didn't respond for a moment and he wondered if they even heard him.

"Nah," they said.

He waited for them to elaborate, but no explanation came. They just kept watching. The bright, flickering flames of the city reflected in their own dark eyes.

"Suit yourself," Jonny said, standing. Sometimes Ashes just wanted to be alone. And if he was being honest, sitting and watching a city burn to rubble for hours on end wasn't exactly his idea of a fun evening.

"Jonny," Ashes called, just as he started to leave.

He stopped and looked back at them. They tilted their head in his direction, but didn't, or couldn't, tear their eyes away from the burning city.

"Thanks."

"Sure," he said, after a moment, not sure what he was being thanked for.

And he left.

Ashes O'Reilly. Pyromaniac, mobster, heartthrob, fucking cheat at cards or dice or any game they laid their hands on, quartermaster (whatever that meant), thief, killer, and absolute pain in the arse.

Yeah.

It was hard to say if Jonny knew anyone better.

**Author's Note:**

> Me before writing this fic: Ashes is pretty cool.
> 
> Me during and after writing this fic: Ashes O'Reilly is a national treasure and must be protected at all costs. Comedy genius. Lovable bastard. Good and wonderful all-around friend.
> 
> Also: a thought experiment in what is just. the worst trash I could think of.


End file.
